Back on Track

Hey All!

After a few intense weeks of playing catch-up, I'm pretty much caught up. I've been having some email issues with a few orders. I'm not sure if the problem is our servers. So, please make sure that once you receive your order you send me a reply confirming receipt.

On other news, for all you techies out there, I've just switched to Adobe CS3. Which means I'm working all orders on the coolest Illustrator software yet. I'm still stumbling my way around things, but I'm set on mastering it pretty soon. This of course is good news for all our clients, since I'll be using a few goodies that ship with the new version of the program on their orders.

Back to work

I've officially finished my last class at school- this gives me infinitely more time to work on Iconize Me! orders. I'm now able to send out new orders every day and really work through this backorder.

Thanks for your patience, everyone.

A Dent

I made a pretty solid dent in the backorder today and sent out about 1/3 of the icons that I had pending. A few more days like this (where it's raining non-stop and I'm stuck inside) and the backorder will go away very quickly.

A few of you have rather large orders (3-5+ icons). Because of how long it can take to complete the entire set, let me know if you'd prefer to have the icons delivered as I complete each one. A few of you have already contacted me about this...no need to email again if we've already discussed this.

And once again- a big thanks to all of you who have shown infinite patience as I work through all this. As always, never hesitate to drop me a line if you have any questions.

More pointless delays

Sorry, but once again the gods have interfered and decided to delay my Iconize Me work even further. My graphics tablet pen decided to stop functioning the other day. Without the pen, I can't draw the orders. I ordered a new one that evening, but it was past their shipping deadline. And now with the weekend here, it look like it will be at least Monday before it arrives.

As always, please feel free to email me with any questions or concerns: paulsahner@gmail.com

Orders and Delays

Hi Everyone,

I'd like to thank all my customers for their patience right now as I work through some delays. Currently, my workload is only allowing me 1-2 days per week when I am able to work on Iconize Me orders- which simply isn't enough to get all orders out within the standard "2-week" period.

I know some of you have been waiting a while- I really am sorry.

I can understand how frustrating it can be to purchase something blindly on the internet. If you are uncomfortable with waiting any more I would be more than happy to issue a full refund at your request. Otherwise, just hang tight, and I promise to get everyone's icons done. If you're under a time constraint and actually need the illustrations for whatever reason (as a gift, etc)- Please email me and I'll see what I can do about expediting your order.

Things will calm down for me in May and I'll be able to devote a lot more time to getting everything complete.

Again, thank you everyone for your orders and patience. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me.

Order Update

I sent out a bunch of orders tonight...below is a list of remaining orders listed by orderer's initials:

RM
PR
BK
EB
CS
PS
CD
JY
JR
MB
PS (A different one)
TH
SW

I'll be working on more and more this week, I would really like to get everything out the door by Sunday night, but we'll have to see.

A bit delayed

I'm running a bit behind on orders (as USUAL!)- but I have the upcoming week off from school, so I'll be using the time to catch up.

If anyone has any questions or concerns about their order- do not hesitate to drop me an email.

Iconize, Blog, and DVG

I've been working hard to send out icons that have been ordered in the past few weeks. I hope people are enjoying them. If you haven't received your order yet and are concerned, please feel free to email me.

My order page is still open at Iconize Me!, so anyone who's interested in finally getting an icon can do so.

If you've never been the blog before, or never really paid much attention to it, then you may not have noticed I revamped it's design a bit. The overall design is actually mimicking my own personal site. But, whatever. I think it's a much-needed improvement. I'm going to try to post here more...about Iconize Me, DVG and anything design-related.

And what about DV Graphics? Well, it's been throughly ignored for nearly a year now. I've just been so busy that I've been unable to post anything new to it. Also, it's hard to find things that are worthy of being posted there. My person work goes on my personal site and deviantART. Designs-in-progress go on the Partners In Design blog. And everything else has been posted to this blog or Iconize Me!. I'm going to try to get some desktops or icons created to post on DVG eventually. The site is still getting a few thousand hits a week, and for some reason, November and December of last year had record hits- so it's far from dead.

Domain Problems

I have no idea whats going on- but I'm having some domain issues. I couldn't say for how long it's been going on or for how much longer it's going to be happening, but I'm going to wait it out until tomorrow night- at which point I'll start taking more action. If you really want to get to the various DVG sites, you can do so through here:

Iconize Me!:
http://s106475891.onlinehome.us/iconizeme/

DVG:
http://s106475891.onlinehome.us/

Iconize Me in Practice

Dan Alvarez over at Mydaytradingtutor.com recently did a site re-design that included three icons from us here at Iconize Me!:

http://www.mydaytradingtutor.com/news/2007/02/12/day-trading-tutor-gets-a-new-look/

Open...for now.

I've opened to new orders, and they've been coming in strong! Thanks to everyone who expressed an interest- I really appreciate it.

I've been sending out emails and order confirmations to those of you who have contact me. Depending on what I've been doing and where I am, I've been using two different addresses:

one from "@gmail.com"
and one from "@dv-graphics.com"

Hope this doesn't mess up anyone's SPAM blockers.

Minor

I updated the blog template today for no reason.

Holiday Orders

All holiday orders have been sent out. If you've yet to receive yours, please email me before Sunday. paulsahner@gmail.com

Christmas Orders

I am working on and sending out christmas orders RIGHT NOW. All orders WILL be sent out by tomorrow.

Orders I'm currently working on (by orderers initials):
VE
JH
CT
SW
MJ
SMW
JM
WB
DH
PJM

Another happy customer!

Check out what our IconizeMe customers are saying:

http://www.mitchgroup.com/2006/11/drum_roll_pleas.html

Holiday Special

For a very short time, I will be accepting orders.

More information here:

http://www.iconizeme.com/holiday.html

Quick Update - October

Here's a quick update on orders. Just sent out the following:
C.K.
G.M.
G.B.#1
G.B.#2.
Also in production are:
G.B.#3
H.H.#1 through 4
and
Mrs. V.V.
These should be going out this week. Again thanks for your patience.

Jose

Busy October!

We've been very busy at Iconize Me (as usual), and of course, we want to thank our clients for making us the number one portrait icon designers in the world.

In our commitment to keep our clients up to date on their orders, we will keep posting progress reports, as often as we can. So, having said that; P & L, V.V. and A.R. are all sketched, scanned and digitally inked. Now the fun begins.

Ya'll come back now, ya hear!

A few more

We're in full production mode, here at Iconize Me. I want to thank all for your patience. Just sent out today the following orders:
J.C.
T.N.
S.W.

I want to also thank our clients for all the kind comments and positive feed back we've been getting from them. There's nothing more satisfying than a happy customer.;-)

Quick update Sept 15

Just completed and sent out the following:

A.R.
B.B.
C.D. 1 and 2
D.P.
J.K.
M.L.

Enjoy!

More Updates

1) C.D.#1(band) is done, and I must say, it came out pretty darn good.
2) J.K. is colored and ready for the last phase.

So I think we're right on schedule. I will be sending out a large batch pretty soon. Stay tuned.

Updates on orders

This particular post, concerns orders that came in through my very good friend Jim. If you're in this group, I'll do my best to keep you posted. Ok, here we go:
1) A.R., B.B., D.P. and M.L. are all sketched, inked and painted. Which means they're about 75% done.
2) C.D. 1 and 2, as well as J.K. and A.P., are all sketched and inked. So, they're 50% of the way there.
If you didn't read your initials, please check back tomorrow.
Thank you all for your support and stay tuned!!!

Quick update

I recently updated/launched my personal web portfolio:

Click Here

Out of the woods....

All the icons are done, and sent out! If you ordered an icon and have yet to receive it, please contact me: paul@dv-graphics.com

The order page is still closed, but I don't think for too long. I just have a few other things I need to work on before re-opening to the insanity.

Disaster Progress

I suppose it's only fair that I provide an update, right?

So to repair my old G4 would have been $700...and that may not even be the actual fix. So repair was pretty much out of the question. I mean, I could get a nice stop-gap MacMini for the same price or less.

So what to do?

Well, I could get the MacMini, except:
-It can't do dual displays
-It can only handel one hard drive (internal)
-It's intel (I need Adobe CS2 and After Effects, and my Final Cut is not eligible for cross-grade).

I could also get a G5, except:
-The configuration I'd really need is about $3000
-It's "last years technology"
-The Mac Pro had just been announced and the G5 seemed just silly now


So yeah, I figured the best thing to do was consider the old G4 officially retired and just invest into a new "workhorse" machine. I went to the 5th Ave store and picked up:

Quad 2.66 Mac Pro with a 250 gig HD, 3 gigs of ram and superdrive.

With my education discount, it wasn't too much more than an older G5 with MUCH lower specs, so I did pretty well.

***
"But wait, didn't you just say you can't go intel because you need CS 2?"
-Yes, but, after reading some reviews and benchmarks, I figured it would be OK, because: Even under Rosetta, the Quad Mac Pro still runs most CS 3 apps faster than my old Dual G4. The key apps, like Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects (surprisingly enough) all run without any noticable glitches. And once CS3/AFX 8 come out, this thing is going to SCREAM.
***
I'm awaiting bluetooth and airport modules (they didn't have them in stock), I ordered a secondary 320 gig HD for backup, and I have my old G4 HDs sitting in Firewire cases for a combined 1TB of storage. The Superdrive I had in my G4 (An 8X DL deal that I got online) was easily installed into the lower bay on the Mac Pro...So very little is being wasted from the old machine.

When I got back to the apartment, I was able to get all of my data off the old G4 boot drive onto the new Mac Pro drive- After a bit of messing around with permissions (Migration Assistant didn't want to transfer anything correctly, so I opted for the scarier "Log into Root, transfer data yourself and correct the permissions later"). Everything was up and running in about 3-4 hours. I spent the evening making sure everything was working as it should, and installing the new Final Cut Studio (I need it).

The next day, got right back on track and immediately completed and sent out some icons. And that's what I've been doing. Each night, I've been sitting down and completing as many as I can and sending them out right away. I've got a LOT done, and they're all being sent out ASAP. I'm confident all pending order will be completed by the end of this week.

Here is a list of pending orders, listed by initials:
KCT
MW
MT
NM
CG
SD
AEC

None of those orders contain multiple icons, so things will move very quickly.

Whew. Ok. I think that's everything.